


the earth has never felt this old

by brawlite



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pining, Religion, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Theological Ramblings, aziraphale spends a lot of time following him, crowley spends a lot of time in churches, finding your own salvation, i'm not a theological scholar i'm just a lapsed catholic, it's all about penance and self-denial here, not necessarily one-sided pining but crowley isn't about to let himself have anything nice, places of worship in many of their forms, probably blasphemy or at the very least some irreverence, so apologies all around basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19408528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawlite/pseuds/brawlite
Summary: Crowley has a long history with holy places.





	the earth has never felt this old

**3780 BC**

The first time Crowley sets foot on holy ground, it’s barely noticeable. It’s a few minutes before he even notices a change. And then, there it is: not quite an itch, hardly even a scratch. It’s the pins and needles of sitting still too long, of letting a limb go a bit idle. The nagging irritation of an insect bite. Not even worth mentioning -- except it _is_ , because it’s _new_.

The minuteness of the sensation mirrors the stature of the small temple he’s entered, which can scarcely even be called a structure, really. Just wood and stone, just palms turned upward toward the sky in fear, toward God and her divine strength.

At first, he thinks it’s a good sign that it’s barely even a noticeable twinge. He realizes, after a little while, that it’s just a start. The beginning in an exceedingly long and very disheartening lifelong trend.

**300 BC**

Four thousand years on the earth and you’d think Crowley would be used to it by now.

It shouldn’t be worse than his Fall. Nothing, he thought, would be worse than the Fall. The terrifying plummet into nothingness, away from everything you have ever known. Away from safety, away from home -- and most importantly (though he tries not to dwell on this one too much at all): away from love.

Nothing, _nothing_ should be worse than the Fall.

This, though. This is never-ending. A constant reminder. There are places on this planet that don’t want him, places that actively attack him, burn him, smite him for his past transgressions. Every time the ground burns beneath his feet, he is reminded of his lack, his sins -- of his Fall.

\--

It wears on him like water on a stone.

**156 AD**

In the garden of Gethsemane, Crowley encounters the first structure he has true difficulty setting foot inside.

Nothing has ever been quite like this before. No holy place has tried this hard to fight him, tried so steadfastly to torture him. None of humanity’s places of worship have ever felt this righteous about their loathing before.

For weeks, he lingers outside. Torn up. Feet blackened. The meat of him raw and aching inside his chest.

Aziraphale finds him there, in the garden, amongst the plants that pale in comparison to the Garden in which they met. The temple (not quite a synagogue anymore, is it a _church_ , now?) sits amongst the plants, frequented by people day and night. Crowley watches them as he sits, dirt on his robes, shreds of palm leaves laced between his fingers.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, upon encountering Crowley.

His golden curls are illuminated by the rosy light of the dawn. The ache between Crowley’s ribs widens and burns.

Aziraphale knows of Crowely’s troubles with holy places. Too often has the angel walked steadfastly forward through a place of worship, expecting Crowley to follow at his heels like a well trained dog. Too often has he glanced back at Crowley’s limping, stalled advancement after him (because he will never not follow), and offered a look that spoke to pity, to guilt, to an aching sort of comfort that made Crowley go angry from the roots up.

“Worse, now?” the angel asks him.

Crowley shrugs. “They’re worse, now, I think.”

Not that he knows why, truly. No one can. That’s the joke of it.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s just a steady progression onward for humanity. And a steady slope downward for Crowley.

\--

The only bright spot in all of it is Aziraphale.

Crowley tries not to assign him that sort of light. He blames it on blasphemy, the inherent wrongness of looking to someone who isn’t God with that sort of reverence, with that sort of _hope_. But it’s not that. Crowley has long since stopped concerning himself with blasphemy, with desecration of the Lord’s lot. That’s his role in all of this, isn’t it? He’s supposed to be profane, supposed to be irreverent.

It’s fear, instead. Simple and existential and base. Not fear of god, but the fear of something unnamable. Something more abstract and ardent and fearfully warm. He, a fallen angel, is not supposed to be so wanting for a touch of divinity for all of the wrong reasons.

Part of him used to worry that his Fall created such a vast chasm inside him, a place so forever dark and hungry that it was inevitable. That he has no control over his desire, his aching yearning. That the way he saw Aziraphale was inescapable and inhumane. Another part of his earthly torment.

But then Aziraphale, in all of his _holy glory_ would do something so dreadful callous that Crowley’s fears were washed away, abated. Diminished for the rest of eternity.

If Crowley wanted a touch of divinity to right the darkness inside of him, he would be chasing at the golden heels of Gabriel or Michael. He wouldn’t be constantly reaching out, like a moth to a flame, toward the light of someone as fond of the world and all of its pleasures as Aziraphale.

Not, of course, that Aziraphale isn’t just as holy as any of the other angels. He’s just as divine, just as pure. Just as much of an asshole.

There’s not much to gain, chasing after and hungering for someone like Aziraphale. But, of all the things Crowley has done in his existence so far, it’s the one he can’t bear to make himself feel guilty over.

He can try not to assign Aziraphale the light that Crowley so easily attributes to him, the light that Crowley so greedily takes from him -- but he _won’t_ allow himself to blemish that radiance with remorse or regret.

He won’t.

\--

That only really lasts so long.

He just ends up feeling guilty for feeling guilty about it, which is no real help at all.

**1062 AD**

Sometimes when he’s feeling more forgiving toward himself, he goes to a synagogue.

The Slat Abn Shaif Synagogue was built just two years ago. It’s still shining with newness, with the crisp sort of optimism and vitality that lingers around all the polished edges of new places.

Setting foot inside still hurts, still burns with a righteous indignation that rivals his own. But this building, this faith, is upfront about it.

This building is built for an old God, a just God. It’s built for the one who cast Crowley from Heaven, the one who drowned the people of Mesopotamia for their transgressions, the one who watches as the world burns slowly forward with little intervention from either side. There is no remorse felt here, no pity. Just truth. Just justice. This is the God Crowley is familiar with; a rock to look upon as a guiding figure, steadfast and forever. Not without mercy, but patient in her unyielding sanctity. Quiet and enduring.

Here, there is no fictitious New Testament love for someone as vile as him. Her forgiveness is something that Crowley will never feel the touch of, something he does not even allow himself to dream of. It is a straightforward faith. Cause and effect. Do good, be good; progress. Crowley has done bad, has been bad -- and so he will justly reap the rewards of his efforts. There is no absolution for a demon in this world or the next, and there will be no clemency in the eyes of this God here, not for him. There is no watered down and diluted Christian promise of salvation floating on the inside this place -- and Crowley respects that.

It’s upfront. Familiar.

It burns the same, but somehow hurts less.

\--

Other days, Crowley walks into churches just to feel the phantom pain of hellfire beneath his feet. It’s the cut of icy wind that tore through him as he Fell, the pain of staring too long at the sun. It’s the sheer vehemence and fervor of their faith, the gut-wrenching frenzy of it.

The insincere self-righteousness of it makes him sick to his stomach. The incensed air makes him dizzy with all the false promises of peace it holds. The light, filtering in through depictions of colorful martyrdom, gives him a migraine. These people, this faith -- it’s just another one in a long progression. Destined to hurt him, designed to reinforce the ache of never-ending sorrow. Salt on a wound that will never close.

And yet, he does it anyway. Continuing into these places of prayer like a pilgrim.

Worshiping at the altar of a God who longer loves him, who no longer has a place for him in her own temple.

\--

He wonders, if, one day, humanity will get it perfectly right. If they’ll stop picking and choosing the more appealing parts of their faith, doubling down against their selection-bias and conform, perfectly, to the word of God.

They haven’t, yet. But that doesn’t mean they won’t. They are creatures of imperfection -- but anything’s possible, Crowley thinks.

He wonders if there will be a day where the doors of a place of worship will be closed to him entirely.

Aziraphale finds him, sometimes. Sitting outside churches, cathedrals, synagogues, temples -- lingering along the edges of their grounds, their graveyards. Aziraphale, who walks so easily inside holy places, sits just as easily beside Crowley on their outskirts.

Sometimes, in his less kind moments to himself, Crowley wishes that it would hurt too, sitting so close to an angel. _This_ angel. Maybe then, it would feel a bit closer to penance, instead of just greedy indulgence. Instead, it feels so human, the way Crowley pines after the angel’s presence, the way he craves it like a pernicious addiction. It feels so human to want something that is not meant for him, something that he will never be good enough for again. A divine being should know better.

“This one is lovely inside,” Aziraphale says. “They have a beautiful fresco that depicts the door to heaven. Not accurate, mind you -- but beautiful all the same.”

Crowley’s seen it. He’s set foot inside this one and let the hallowed ground char his feet. They still hurt from it, now. But he says nothing. Aziraphale doesn’t need to know he does this. Doesn’t need to know about Crowley’s futile acts of desperate, hopeless atonement. His acts of self-flagellation.

Besides -- nothing’s quite the same as sitting next to Aziraphale. Nothing else eases the desperate ache like his presence. A heavenly, golden balm over all of Crowley’s self-inflicted wounds, like honey on a burn. Even setting foot inside the holiest of places couldn’t give Crowley this.

It hurts in the way it doesn’t hurt at all.

He eats it up, ravenous for it.

“They’re all the same, I’d imagine,” Crowley says with a disinterested shrug, instead.

He tries to soak up his moments with the angel. They are few and far between.

**1407**

Aziraphale sighs. It’s a heavenly sound, like a rush of the wind through the trees of a sun-dappled forest. The gentle sound of chimes outside a temple. The relief after a storm.

There’s no telling him, no explaining it all away. He knows, because of course he knows. It’s absurd Crowley might have ever thought otherwise, or that the angel might have left him with the dignity of looking the other way.

“Oh, please _don’t_ ,” Crowley asks, before Aziraphale can say anything further. It’s not a plea and certainly not a prayer. Just a heartfelt request, from one old being to another.

There is a pause before the angel speaks. It’s filled with nothing but well-meaning kindness; it’s the closest Aziraphale has ever come to hurting him. There’s more time for that in the future, though, Crowley knows. He is a raw wound when it comes to Aziraphale, just waiting for the promise of more pain. It is as inevitable as his Fall. There will be a day, he recognizes, where the angel will take all of his faith and all of his holiness and he will deny and denounce their friendship, their association. It’s in the cards, which are already fanned out over the table -- all Crowley can do is prepare for the inescapable reality.

“What would you have me do, Crowley?” Aziraphale asks.

They’re near the baptism ponds of Al-Maghtas, right next to the ruins of a monastery and a temple. Such a holy site, where humanity keeps building and building. How was Crowley to know that the water would burn worse than any holy ground underneath his toes. His skin is raw. The pain shoots up his nerves and makes him clench his teeth. Normally, ruins don’t hurt. Not like this.

“I don’t know,” Crowley hisses, eyes closed as he spreads his legs out on cool grass. There’s shade over them now, protecting the two of them from the heat of the sun. Only moments before, the sky had been cloudless, blue.

“Shall I just sit here, then?” Aziraphale asks. “Keep you company?”

Crowley doesn’t warn him that it could be days before the pain recedes enough to walk away.

He doesn’t warn Aziraphale, but Aziraphale stays anyway. They sit through a handful of dusks and dawns together, rotating through bouts of silence and then of conversation, catching up on each other’s lives and all the parts and pieces that they’ve missed.

On the seventh day, Crowley can stand.

“Promise me you’ll stop this?” Aziraphale asks, so carefully. So kindy.

Crowley grins and affects an air of nonchalance that hurts with its vehemence. He can’t say _thank you_. They don’t do that.

“Don’t worry so much,” Crowley says. Implying disinterest, that he won’t.

Instead:

 _For you_? _Yes, anything._

\--

For Aziraphale, Crowley stops.

\--

Until the incident with the church and the Nazis and the books.

But he can’t be blamed for that. After all, he’s just repaying a favor, isn’t he? It’s still selfish, of course -- Aziraphale could easily deal with the paperwork of discorporation, the hassle of it all. But Crowley would have to wait years for Heaven to re-issue him a new body, and he doesn’t _want_ to wait that long.

He doesn’t want to deal with the pain of being on earth alone.

After so long, he doesn’t think he _can_.

**1985 AD**

It’s been years since Crowley set foot in a church proper.

After the blitz, his feet had been charred black for years, tarnished with the soot of sins long since forgotten (-- no, never quite forgotten, but it’s easy enough now to pretend, to let his shoulders slope unburdened and free). Even the soles of his feet are fine now, as unmarred and as perfect as they were at the beginning (his true beginning, anyway) -- as long as he remembers to look past the scales.

The churches in Casco Antiguo are all mostly crumbling in disrepair at this point. He remembers a time, a blink of an eye ago, when the neighborhood stood stately and magnificent, filled with the opulence that the Spanish were so good at proliferating in the new world, back when they first got a solid foothold. The streets, lined with glistening monuments to avarice and hubris, all slapped together in the name of God and country.

He kicks through the rubble of the buildings -- _churches_ \-- in bare feet, just because he can. He imagines the usual pain of heat underneath his toes, unforgiving -- but feels nothing. His imagination can only sometimes get him so far. It’s impossible to feel God’s love -- or her disdain -- without the real thing. Just faint memories of pain that only prickle and twinge in the murky lower level of his consciousness.

The foundation is all that’s left of the majority of the churches here. The lucky ones have been restored back to their original splendor -- but so many, like this one, sit forgotten. Monuments to past glory, to cardinals and deacons and nobles long since erased by the steady progression of time. Crowley’s favorite is one whose walls still mostly tower toward the heavens, the general shape and vibe of a place he’s not allowed -- with just a _hint_ of holiness still lingering in the corners. The ceilings fell years ago and the rest of the guts have either rotted away or have been looted by needy hands; but most of the stones remain, too heavy and unprofitable to be worth the effort.

Aziraphale finds him there, knees on the cracked tile where the altar once sat majestic, a lost shard of stained glass -- blue, like something so uncomfortably familiar -- clutched between his forefinger and thumb. It’s a miracle he found it here, but Crowley’s always been awfully good at that sort of thing.

After a point, it gets easier and easier to find little pieces of light within the rubble. Little scraps of grace that have fallen between the cracks. For Aziraphale, he replaced searching out pain with seeking out forbidden bits of light. Par for the course, really.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, so gently.

“This used to be something beautiful,” Crowley says, not looking up. He tilts the glass in his fingers, catching it in the light of the sun. So bright, the equator’s sun. It’s always so warm, so unrelenting in its reach. He loves it. The cold blooded part of him (the _only_ part of him, he reminds himself) can never get enough.

Aziraphale doesn’t kneel next to him, but he does stoop down. Crouching next to Crowley’s slumped form, getting to the right height; kindly evening the playing field like he always does.

“Saint Sebastian,” Crowley says, trying to picture it in his mind’s eye. It’s been a little while since he saw this church in all its glory. “Or maybe just the usual Saint Joseph. Think I would remember if it was Sebastian. What a guy.”

Ironically, for someone in one of its former colonies, Aziraphale is supposed to be in Spain right now. Crowley doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. It’s always been easy to keep track of the angel -- too easy, really. He just closes his eyes, watches the darkness dance around on the back of his eyelids, and _knows_ , deep down. Like some sort of homing beacon, like he’s a bird and not a reptile. It’s ludicrous, really. And maybe a little sad, too.

Crowley doesn’t say anything about Aziraphale’s misplacement of his itinerary, about how he’s slumming it in a crumbling part of the new world, playing minder to a demon. Neither does Aziraphale.

“Let’s get you something to drink,” Aziraphale suggests.

“Wine,” Crowley agrees without thinking. “Lots of wine.”

He doesn’t particularly want to leave the church, but if Aziraphale is _here_ and he’s leaving -- well, obviously Crowley is going to follow. They both know that. Aziraphale is too kind to mention it and Crowley is too ashamed to dwell. It’s just a fact of the universe: like gravity, like time, like fate itself. A constant.

Aziraphale hums. It’s a gentle, melodious sound that reverberates straight into Crowley’s bones. If Crowley closes his eyes, he can imagine it echoing through the high rafters of the church, the way it would have echoed and sung like the first chords of a psalm played on an organ. Resonant and harmonious and heavenly.

“Let’s get you up,” the angel says, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to the wine, despite the fact that Crowley knows he’ll offer up water, first. Like either of them could get _dehydrated_.

He doesn’t offer Crowley a hand as he pushes to his feet and stands, though he does wait a beat to make sure Crowley heard him. Crowley tries not to let the ache of lacking worm its way into his bones, despite the fact that it’s always there, marrow deep and ever so raw. He also can only look up at Aziraphale for so long, the midday sun haloing light around his head in the most painful of ways.

He pushes himself to his feet and sways with the effort of it. It’s been awhile since he’s seen Aziraphale. It’ll be a while until he sees him again. The opportunities to bask in Aziraphale’s heavenly warmth are few and far between.

Better make the most of it, Crowley tells himself.

He can laze about in holy rubble for weeks afterward, if he’s still so inclined.

\--

Crowley doesn’t expect to hear from Aziraphale for another decade, at least.

Instead, he runs into the angel in West Berlin. Well -- he doesn’t quite _run into_ Aziraphale as he just blinks and the angel is just _there_ , sitting across from him in the little café Crowley is currently in, looking all easy and unruffled, like he’s been there for hours.

Crowley doesn’t startle because he’s much too cool and composed for that. Instead, he bites down on his tongue, takes a sip of his coffee, and slides a packet of biscuits across the table toward the angel.

“It’s going to come down, soon,” Crowley says, his mind’s eye already imagining the fall. The dust. The wreckage -- and then the rebuilding.

He doesn’t have to glance out the window of the café to lay eyes on the graffitied wall for the angel to know what he’s talking about.

“So I hear. Your side upset?”

Crowley pulls a face. “Yours were the big fans of walls, from what I recall.”

It’s not hard to remember standing on the limestone one of the garden with Aziraphale, thunder rolling ominously overhead. If Crowley were to close his eyes, he could put himself back in that moment, standing so close to the angel that he could still feel his body’s heat -- reminiscent of the sun, of the glory of God. It took ages for that wall to crumble, for all desert to consume and bury it all. Long before that, the rivers dried up, the flora shriveling, wilting, dying from the lack -- untouched, but never quite forgotten. Not by the collective consciousness of humanity or the Earth, and certainly not by Crowley.

Aziraphale purses his lips. “So you weren’t involved in--?” He waves a hand, gesturing at the looming, barbed-wire covered structure outside. It’s hostile, hateful.

“Did it themselves,” Crowley says.

He didn’t even take credit for this one. The humans are getting more and more imaginative as the years go by. Crowley claims some of it, of course -- he’s not stupid. Sloth is one of the easy ones. He can’t bring himself to claim it all, though, not even the majority. They’re too crafty, too cruel.

With Aziraphale here, this dreary city seems brighter. Crowley feels like he can breathe again.

It shouldn’t be like that, he thinks -- like he’s holding his breath for decades until Aziraphale is next to him again. But he shouldn’t have fallen, either. There’s not much one can do about the way things simply _are_.

“I’ll order you some coffee,” Crowley says, already flagging down someone with the impulse to bring another cup.

There was a church here, once. Right smack under the foundation of this little café. Cities are like that now, stacked -- just memories on top of memories on top of memories. Lives lived out on the remains of all that came before them, unknowing and blissfully unaware. The floor doesn’t burn his feet, but there’s a prickle of something holy here. Just enough to tingle. Like the memory of an electric current, the buzz in the air after a bolt of lightning. Crowley relishes in it. The thrum of holiness reminds him, always, of Aziraphale. He holds onto it, tight, even though the angel is sitting right across the small table. Even that, sometimes, is not quite enough.

Especially because he always:

“Oh, I can’t stay,” Aziraphale says. “I’m needed on the other side for the negotiations. Some bolstering, and all.” Ever ephemeral.

Crowley nods. He doesn’t ask why Aziraphale is here in the first place. Probably checking up on Crowley to make sure he’s not getting into too much trouble or trying to throw a wrench in things. Making sure he doesn’t have to thwart any of Crowley’s misdeeds (even though Crowley, for the most part, has been laying low as of late. No need to get up to much when humanity’s got it pretty well covered).

Crowley begins tugging the packet of biscuits back toward himself, slow. It slides across the table like a fishing lure.

“If you really can’t stay,” he says cooly. Like he wants the sweets back more than he wants the saccharine taste of Aziraphale’s company.

Aziraphale frowns, setting his hand down on the packet, fingers carefully avoiding Crowley’s own. Crowley bites down on the pleased smile at the half-victory; after all these years he knows the angel’s vices almost as well as he knows his own. The angel’s, at least, aren’t nearly as embarrassing.

A waitress sets a cup of steaming coffee down on the table and offers Aziraphale some cream from a small porcelain carafe.

“It’ll be better than anything you get on the other side,” Crowely mentions casually, thinking of shortages of condensed milk and stale, rationed grounds. It’s a passing thought and not a temptation -- or not much of one, anyway. “At least for a while, before that wall comes down. And then, awhile after, I imagine.”

Quiet settles between them for a moment. Crowley watches from behind dark glasses as Aziraphale lifts the mug and takes a small sip of coffee. And then another.

Crowley doesn’t deserve Aziraphale’s time. He’s done nothing to earn it, nothing to be gifted it. But sometimes he acquires it anyway, through chance or random happenstance. And when he does? Crowley doesn’t give it up so easily, digging his claws into the meat of it and refusing to let go until the very last minute.

Heavenly creatures can be fickle things. God’s love is a testament to that. Swings and roundabouts, switchbacks and catch-22’s all cluttering up the pages of her glorious book from start to finish. Even Crowley, in his trusty Bentley, would have trouble navigating them if they were motorways.

Angels, Crowley thinks, aren’t much different from God, at least in terms of fickleness. Aziraphale is easy, for the most part, to predict. But when it comes to his associations with Crowley, he’s erratic, unreliable. He’s constantly backpedaling on their near-six thousand year friendship (one-sided as it perhaps may be, at least _Crowley_ considers Aziraphale his friend). The angel is quick to denounce it, to call their _association_ something by any other damning, painful name. To him, it’s nothing.

To Crowley -- well, it’s everything.

It’s all he has left.

And perhaps he should heed that saying about eggs and baskets -- but at this point, Crowley doesn’t have much else to lose. Centuries earlier, he had already prepared himself for the worst.

So, he takes what he can get and basks in every moment of it, living for each scrap of time he gets with the angel -- because, after all: what’s life without all the little pleasures to make up for the rest of it?

**2014 AD**

Crowley has never spent this much _time_ around Aziraphale.

They don’t see each other every day, of course. They haven’t, since Crowley walked through the Downling’s door as Warlock’s nanny -- but they might as _well_ , for how little they’ve seen each other over the past millennia. Ever since the dukes of hell placed that handbasket in Crowley’s waiting hand, their lives have been _different_. Turned inside-out and beaten with the handle of a broom, dust of complication and association clouding up everything.

Living with an expiration date isn’t something either of them are used to.

It’s stifling, too, being this close to the angel on the daily. Confronted with his tired addiction to Aziraphale’s light.

Crowley isn’t sure which is worse. He doesn’t let himself dwell on either for long enough to sort out an answer.

\--

There’s no time left to laze about in holy rubble feeling sorry for himself. No time to dig through the wreckage for little scraps of beauty, little tastes of lapsed salvation.

But who needs that anymore, when Crowley has Aziraphale’s light to guide him through, to pull him up from the darkest of places?

\--

Aziraphale isn’t a good gardener. Sure, he’s great with the animals, with all the living things great and small -- just not _plants_. Crowley’s never had the time to learn this about him -- only ever seeing the angel in passing, only ever for short periods of time. The longest he’s ever spent with the angel, since the Garden and then the pools of John the Baptist, is at the Dowlings.

There’s so much to learn. He tries not to, trying to keep his sheer desire and craving for even a scrap of Aziraphale’s essence to a minimum -- but there’s only so much self-restraint he’s capable of. He’s a demon, after all. Discipline has never been one of his virtues.

Crowley takes care of the plants in the garden after night falls, while Aziraphale holes up in his little caretaker’s cottage to read. Crowley keeps the plants flourishing, ensuring that Aziraphale keeps his job. Ensuring that Crowley keeps Aziraphale in his immediate periphery.

Without him, with the end of times so rapidly approaching, Crowley doesn’t know what he’d do.

\--

On the first day of the rest of their lives, Crowley knows he couldn’t have done any of it without Aziraphale.

\--

“Did you ever stop that dreadful thing with the consecrated ground?” Aziraphale asks him, when it’s all said and done.

“Does it matter?” Crowley asks.

 _Yes_ , he wants to say. _Because you asked me to_. _I’d do anything if you asked it of me._

They’re drinking a Shiraz from Barossa Valley that should have rung up at somewhere near a thousand pounds at the little shop where he picked it up. Instead, it rang up at about twelve. Not that Crowley actually paid for it, but it’s the little things that so delight him still. The world is full of little delights, little pieces of blue glass found in the corners.

“I’d say it does,” Aziraphale says. “This is nice wine, my dear.” Even after all these years, Crowley beams with the smallest of praises from his friend.

“If you absolutely _must_ know,” Crowley says, taking a sip from his own glass, if only for something to do with his hands, “I did stop.”

It _is_ quite nice wine. He congratulates himself on the choice.

“Thank you,” Aziraphle says.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Crowley says, out of habit. The denial that comes so easily. After all that they’ve been through, he wants to _stop_. He doesn’t have to deny himself this any longer. But does he even know how?

“I know,” Aziraphale says.

They drink in silence for a while. The ticking of Aziraphale’s grandfather clock is the only sound between the two of them, a steady reminder of all the seconds they have gained. Of all the second chances that now lay stretched out in front of them, an endless glorious road.

“I did,” Crowley says, after a long while. “Actually, I did it because you asked. I would have done anything you asked of me, angel.” He swallows. Truth is a hard thing to let slide loose from his tongue and it clings like honey, but if he doesn’t, it’ll rot between his ribs. It’ll eat him up inside. “I still would. Always.”

“I know,” Aziraphale says, after an even longer while.

He is brilliant, bright.

\--

There is a small church in Tadfield. A little chapel run by jesuits and nuns.

The stained glass isn’t fancy and the decorations aren’t ornate. The cross above the altar is a simple one, no golden adornments, no glitzy showmanship. It’s a simple place, built for purpose and quiet contemplation. The air is rarely tainted with the perfume of incense and even more rarely filled with that of song. It’s all just words here. A quiet, candid sort of faith.

The light doesn’t hurt his eyes. The air doesn’t burn with every inhale.

The ground beneath his feet feels just the same as it did outside.

There’s nothing for him here. Just another building, mundane and no different than the rest.

Forgiven or forgotten. He’s not sure which he is.

He’s not sure it even matters anymore.

He lingers in front of a vestibule with a few candles lit in front of it. This window of stained glass is of Saint Anthony of Padua, heart aflame and eyes lifted toward the sky. Once upon a time, Crowley saw himself in those eyes, in that longing gaze. Now -- now, doesn’t have his eyes on the heavens. Doesn’t seek atonement or forgiveness. Now, he simply is. As he ever was, but without the guilt. The light is the same light as that of outside, just filtering in through a visage he no longer needs.

“Patron saint of lost things. Of lost people.”

Aziraphale stands by his side. His fingers, warm and kind, slip between Crowley’s. His voice, as ever, is a balm. This time, though, it feels like a warm heat over a healing wound. Raw bits all knitting themselves back together again.

“Let’s go home,” Crowley says, thinking of their little cottage on the South Downs. Thinking of the light and the garden and the love. Of their own windows, bright and airy. “I don’t think there’s anything left here for me.”

“Was there ever?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley squeezes his hand. A small reminder of reality. Of what he’s been gifted. No -- of what he’s _always_ had beside him, but had been too self-pitying to accept. What he wouldn’t let himself see or have.

“I don’t know,” Crowley says. “But I don’t think it really matters, anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [littlesystems](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlesystems/pseuds/littlesystems) for looking this over for me, for helping me with making this hopefully a bit more heart-wrenching, and for listening to me wax poetic about religion for a week. also, thank you to [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve) for helping me in regards to judaism and for talking with me about repentance and forgiveness.
> 
> title from _angels_ by the 69 eyes.
> 
> if you've got the time and the inclination, a comment would mean the world to me!
> 
> you can catch me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/brawlite) or [tumblr](http://brawlite.tumblr.com), if you are so inclined.


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